Tuesday, March 19, 2013

One more time!

Wolf Lake on the city's far Southeast corner will not be as drab and dreary as it did earlier this month once springtime weather arrives. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

It’s
the last day of winter, and perhaps we should reflect a bit on what could be
the weirdest weather spiel I can recall.

We
went for so long without any notable snowfall that it was likely we would set
some sort of record that would NEVER be topped. Or should I say reduced?

YET
I COULDN’T help but notice a Weather Channel broadcast recently that did a
special segment about the Chicago winter, which when all is said and done will
come in at about average in terms of the amount of snow we got.

Because
once it started snowing in late January, it started coming down at
heavier-than-usual rates. We even got the heaviest snowfall in two years with
that last storm we were hit with just over a week ago – the one that dumped
just over 9 inches officially, but gave certain parts of the metropolitan area
more than a foot in one shot.

It
seems that our snowfall total for this winter is about 1 ½ inches less than the
average for a Chicago winter, according to the Weather Channel (yes, I’m inclined
to watch those national weather forecasts in the early morning hours when I’m
still trying to wrest myself from sleep).

A
typical Chicago winter usually has one intense storm, and some steady snowfall
all throughout the season so that we’re perpetually aware of the fact that we
live in the Midwestern U.S.

IT’S
AT THE point where I know that winter is over and spring has arrived when the
landscape around me is no longer a slushy, muddy off-white of snow that has
been driven through so many times and is instead the drab brown of dead grass
that has yet to return to life.

That
bright green is the real sign that winter is over – not the mere fact that the
calendar on Wednesday will tell us that spring has officially arrived.

So
what should we think on this final official day of winter (although I won’t be
the least bit surprised if we get one last snow-fall along the shores of
southwestern Lake Michigan)?

Personally,
the cold temperatures of winter don’t bother me. It’s the slop of the snow and
its potential for creating hazards (due to some people who persist in trying to
whiz right through it while driving) that gets to me – and makes me grateful
that we’re at least at the offend end-point of winter.

BUT
I’M THANKFUL to realize that we really didn’t have it all that bad. Like I
already wrote, we got hit with that one 9-inch storm – which I remember as the
day I was lucky enough to be able to do some work from home.

It
was one of those times that I experienced the “joys” of a freelance writer –
being able to set work hours to my convenience.

By
the next day, public works crews all across the Chicago area by-and-large had
the streets cleared. Life resumed.

We
didn’t get anything close to resembling the storm of Feb. 2, 2011 – the one
that dumped nearly two feet of snow in one shot and actually turned Lake Shore
Drive into a parking lot.

A
LOT THAT people eventually had to return to with a shovel in order to dig out
their cars.

But
it is the split in the winter season that will be memorable – the fact that we
went through December and the bulk of January with hardly any snow, and a
February and early March in which the entity that is Mother Nature (no Chiffon
jokes, please) seemed determined to make up for her early-season slacking off.

I am a Chicago-area freelance writer who has reported on various political and legal beats. I wrote "Hispanic" issues columns for United Press International, observed up close the Statehouse Scene in Springfield, Ill., the Cook County Board in Chicago and municipal government in Gary, Ind. For a time, I also wrote about agriculture. Trust me when I say the symbolic stench of partisan politics (particularly when directed against people due to their ethnicity) is far nastier than any odor that could come from a farm animal.